Still struggling with this question.

The arguments for podcasting are a lot more persuasive to me: Audio is small, easy to produce at a high quality, easy to transport, upload, download, playable on any device a student could possibly have around them (including ancient computers) and you can do other things while you are listening to them, which is how most students study and work anyway, if you have ever watched them in the student center, or talked to them about how they work through a class.

Video is more attention grabbing, more dynamic. It mirrors the classroom more realistically as there’s a face to look at, there’s a human presentation in the visual as well as the aural, and there’s slides and reference material to look at during the course of the lecture. Most computers can play video, and all phones that the students have, with the rare exception, can play these videos. The videos are not portable, but that’s ok: Everyone has access to a free wi-fi somewhere or a plan where watching a streaming video is not going to kill their ability to use their phone for other activities that month.

Of course many are saying right now: This is not a choice, just make the video and then make the audio available separately. This is not an option to a rhetor. At least not to one who cares about the art! Both are very different approaches to both the audience and the topic. The way I deliver, organize, and prove with just audio will be very different than with video, but both will be of the same quality in the end – hopefully attention grabbing, mesmerizing, and great. Of course, the audience gets to judge that, not me.

The trick with video is I think that the big advantage is being able to put up a slide, an image or some text in the background to support what it is that you are trying to say or get them to understand. With audio you can’t do this at all.

But audio presentations are much more intimate and conversational. You aren’t performing so much your presentation to the class, you are having a one-on-one conversation with the listener about an important idea.

I think what I will have to do is make both. It’s time consuming, but over this holiday I will have nothing but time. The term is nearly over, and the late start gives me a chance to produce both types of lecture for my courses in the spring. I think I’ll just listen to the art and let the audience decide which they like better.